Gordon Campbell on Snowden revelations and ACT on incest

Gordon Campbell on the Snowden revelations and
ACT’s position on incest

by Gordon
Campbell

Ever since the
existence of the Echelon spy system was revealed in the
1990s, the risk of using cyber-espionage for commercial gain
and trading advantages - rather than for military and
security reasons - has been obvious. So it should come as no
real surprise that the NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden is
about to reveal information along these lines about the
5 Eyes spy network to which New Zealand belongs. These
documents will show this country has been spying on some of
our key trading partners. China and Indonesia are likely
targets. Given that the Pacific is seen as one of our zones
of responsibility, it also seems likely that we would have
been spying on our friends among the Pacific Forum countries
as well.

It is not simply that our spies have been
moonlighting as corporate snoops, for the benefit of our
export drive. That’s not big news, since the security
services are virtually compelled to do so, by law. One of the
GCSB’s three objectives for instance, is to
“contribute to the economic wellbeing of New Zealand.”
Even the very word 'security’ is defined in the 1969 SIS
legislation as including anything that “impacts
adversely...on New Zealand’s economic
wellbeing.”

Spying on the likes of China by our security
agencies is also an inevitable by-product of treating some
of our most important trading partners as security threats.
It would be comforting to think that - somewhere along the
line - someone in MFAT might have done a cost/benefit
analysis as to which perception of China is of more value to
this country. Do we gain more by embracing China as a
trading partner and near neighbour with whom we should be
cultivating friendly relations during the 21st century? Or
do we gain more by treating it as a hostile military and
security presence in the Asia/Pacific region?

Right now,
we seem to be treating it as both. As a result, it seems
likely that our exporters are going to cop the backlash from
the Snowden revelations, once they finally see daylight. Our
perishable export goods will be targeted for bureaucratic
delays, and some of our business executives may even be
detained, if the Chinese decide that certain New Zealand
companies have been a party to, or have benefitted from, any
illegal surveillance activities. In the long run, such
consequences may prove beneficial - if they trigger
a public debate about whether we get more out of being a
genuine ally of China, than a snoop on what they're doing.
For now, we’re trying to have it both ways. A friendly
trading partner, and a hostile sneak, largely on a behalf of
the Americans. One can hardly blame China for making us pay
a higher price for being so...ambivalent.

ACT and
incestWell, Jamie Whyte is certainly making his
mark as leader of the Act Party. If people were having
difficulty telling the shaven-headed Whyte apart from that
other shaven-headed guy who used to lead the Act Party, now
they know - Whyte is the guy who thinks that incest
should be legal. Oh, but only between consenting adults.
This begs the question. Given the power dynamics within
families - and the difficulties that already exist in
establishing consent (and the lack of it) with respect to
sexual offending outside the family, Whyte’s
proposal would seem to put a new category of people, many of
them women, at risk of sexual predation by their kin.
Erosion of the consent defence would be a more likely
outcome of the legalising of incest than the protection of
those relatively rare cases where brothers and sisters fall
afoul of the law when they freely and jointly seek to pursue
a marital relationship.

Is incest the end product of
libertarianism in full flower? Or has Whyte taken a leaf
from Colin Craig’s handbook - whereby a small and
insignificant party gets the oxygen of media exposure simply
by issuing a stream of controversial statements? Whyte may
have concluded that there is no such thing as bad publicity,
even when such proposals mainly serve to creep out the
electorate. What it underlines is that Prime Minister John
Key’s likely coalition buddies after this election -
Craig, Whyte and Winston Peters - are a motley crew,
indeed.

One final thing: as this column has argued
previously, if ACT is to perform its role as a ginger group
it has to come up with new policy ideas for the centre
right, and not simply recycle fusty old ones like flat tax.
Astoundingly, even the NZ Herald has now taken ACT
firmly to
task on exactly the same flat tax point in an
editorial:

The flat tax idea involves the applying
of one tax rate to everyone regardless of income. It is
advocated on the grounds of simplicity, fairness,
transparency and economic growth. Gone would be deductions,
loopholes and tax shelters. There are several thorns in that
rosy picture, however. In practice, a flat tax has a greater
impact on low and middle-income earners because they pay
much more tax proportionate to their income. This has led to
the concept being condemned as a ploy to make the rich
richer and the poor poorer.

Advocating the policy here
will open Act to the same criticism, the more so given
increasing concerns about the cost of social inequality.
Already, New Zealand's tax system is more lenient than most
on those who make money, a consequence of the opening of its
economy to the world. A top tax rate of 33 per cent is lower
than all other nations in the OECD when other income taxes
are taken into account. There is no effective tax on capital
gains and few exemptions to GST. That framework works well
in terms of international competitiveness, but it seems the
lowering of tax rates has been a factor in the gap between
the rich and poor widening over the past
quarter-century.

When even Granny Herald turns
against flat tax and preaches against the income inequality
being generated by our ‘lenient’ tax system, isn’t it
time for the new ACT leadership to scratch its bare noggin
and come up with an idea that’s less than 20 years
old?

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